Suns coach Lindsey Hunter not concerned with future

Lindsey Hunter was named the interim head coach of the Phoenix Suns on January 20, tasked with replacing Alvin Gentry.

At the time, the Suns were 13-28.

The team is 25-56 now, and with just one game remaining, Hunter’s job status is very much up in the air.

Will the front office that tabbed him to lead the team over its final 41 games decide to bring him back and give him a shot as the head coach, or will they look to go in a different, perhaps more proven direction?

“I’ll just do what I have to do now, and when those things happen I’ll deal with it. You can’t put yourself in a situation where you’re thinking about something that you have no control over.”

Hunter, who has guided the team to a 12-28 record, said his job now is to get his team ready for its season finale against Denver.

“It would have been easy for our guys to sit back and say ‘we’re not going anywhere, we’re not going to play,’ but I’m really proud of our guys and how their approach has been for the last five or six games,” he said. “They’ve really come out and fought hard and played to win.”

The Suns, who had lost 10 straight at one point, have won two of their last three contests. They face a playoff-bound Nuggets team to finish things off in what could be Hunter’s final game on the bench. At the same time, though, he’d certainly like to come back and get a chance to go through a full training camp.

“Any coach would tell you that if they had an opportunity to do training camp and to have the guys from the beginning and install all the things, the philosophies and the techniques that you like, that’s always a benefit,” Hunter said. “So we just, right now we’ll do what we have to do now and worry about the things when they come about.”